Seismic field acquisition typically has some degree of irregularity in positions of the sources and/or detectors. For example, cultural obstacles such as drilling and production facilities cause irregularities in both marine and land recording geometries. For marine data, another cause of irregularity is cable feather.
Techniques for modeling seismic energy as beams are known. Generally, these techniques assume a regular acquisition mesh. Misalignment of equipment during acquisition of data is generally partially corrected by preprocessing steps before using conventional beam formation techniques.